Dog of Zero
by Shao Leafwalker
Summary: Louise manages to summon exactly what she wanted. Sorta. This time she manages to pull a young Dire Wolf to be her familiar. What happens when Louise gets exactly what she wants, in the form of what will eventually become 1,600 pounds of magically enhanced wolf carrying the familiar runes of the Heart of God. Heaven help the world.
1. Chapter 1

Genre/concept: Saito's a wuss, but manages to luck his way through every battle and challenge, which I loathe.

According to the canon, the only people that a void user can summon/kidnap are people from their reality or the '**real**' world. What happens if Louise managed to pull the Heart of God from a similar fantasy world instead of the Gandalfr Saito? Instead of a failure commoner she gets exactly what she wanted, the infamous dog that she accuses Saito of being. Only this time, she manages to pull a puppy Dire Wolf in from the D&D setting, as befits a powerful mage's familiar that, while spectacular in magical theory, has no clue how to use her void element. While I have no intention of doing a Dark story, I won't be glossing over a lot of the problems that are present in the anime but that are ignored or glossed over.

* * *

BEGIN***

She was ready. All of the proper research had been acquired. Stacks of annotated books lay on her desk with multiple bookmarks in each, as well as nearly fifty pages of notes meticulously prepared and reviewed.

But most importantly, sitting in its place of pride at the center of her desk, was a scrap of a wolf pelt she had acquired from her latest foray in to the capitol that she planned to use as a catalyst.

It had taken a combination of flattery, bribery with an instructor's favorite and expensive wine, as well as an unsubtle threat of a 'magical demonstration' to get it, but access to one of the original treatises on the summoning ritual as well as the theoretical underpinning of the spell had been found, read, and dissected for anything that would help her succeed. After all, if she failed this one piece of magic it would be taken as proof that she truly was a magical blunt, a noble that had managed to fail her bloodline and been judged unworthy of possessing magic by the Founder that had originally had given the nobility their right to rule.

In studying the ancient tome however, she had found an obscure note in the text, theorizing that it would be possible to ensure that a particular species was summoned if the summoner utilized a catalyst from another animal of the same type. However, if the mage were to use a catalyst for a creature that was beyond their talents, the summoning would bring forth a younger creature than was common, and if the mage fell too short of power, it would result in the mage dying from the drain on their willpower.

After many promising young mages killing themselves from overconfidence trying to summon dragons or gryphon familiars nearly a thousand years ago, it had fallen out of practice and into obscurity. But, Louise just knew that if she tried to just rely on the standard spell, she would fail like she always did. This way, if she did fail as spectacularly as she feared, she would be unlikely be alive to continue to shame her family.

Dressed, and with her nerves as steadied as they could be, Louise left her room with her prepared catalyst in her pocket along with her wand.

After all, a simple wolf, while a perfectly respectable familiar in and of itself, should be well within what she should be capable of in terms of power after managing to detonate multiple classrooms with her wayward spells, a feat that even the most talented of dot class mages could barely manage.

Following the crowd of second year students, she couldn't help but reassure herself futilely that she wasn't like the other mages long ago that had failed to summon using a catalyst. Almost all of the recorded cases she could find had overreached themselves trying to summon mighty magical creatures like a gryphon, dragon, or a manticores like her mother's.

As the summoning began, she couldn't help but compare the standard summoning to the modified form that she would be betting it all on.

Where the others would call for "My servant that exists somewhere in this vast universe, my divine, beautiful, wise, powerful servant, heed my call, I wish from very bottom of my heart and add to my guidance and appear!" she would instead be calling for a "sibling of the body of the relic that I possess, and a sibling of the mind and soul that we may walk the path of fate and magic together," all the while channeling her magic from her wand into the ritual circle that had been prepared by the instructor for the ritual.

* * *

As Colbert viewed the numerous familiars, he couldn't help but wonder if Louise would manage this critical magic, or if he would have to adjudicate over one of the most heartrending duties that he had now that he had become a teacher. While not any worse than what he had once regularly done, crushing the hopes of a child was never something that he took any joy in.

Following the proper forms though, he had to ask, "Alright, who's left for today who hasn't summoned their familiar?"

He knew that Louise hadn't gone, due in part from her last name being last on the alphabetical list and also in part from the fact that he had been waiting for her attempt.

Either she would succeed in her summoning, or she would likely destroy the summoning circle in a massive explosion of magic power.

Oh, he knew about her project and research into the basis of the summoning and binding ritual for familiars. Old Thadeus in charge of the library had complained for over a week in the teacher's lounge about her successful ploy/threat to get access to the special editions reserve of the library in order to fully research the familiar summoning spell.

He, along with most of the staff, were rooting for her to succeed. Many just so that she could get a grasp on her magic so that she would stop blowing up their classrooms, while the more politically astute understood the major shifts at the palace if the Valliere, one of the most loyal and powerful noble families in Tristain ended up producing a blunt, on top of a perennially ill second daughter, and along with their eldest daughter having proven to be difficult to find an appropriate suitor for. For himself, he just worried for young Louise, along with what her mother, Karin the Heavy Wind, would do in order to deal with the fallout from no longer having a daughter that could be recognized as a noble.

Kirche brought his musing short with her comment "Louise hasn't gone yet Professor, I can't wait to see what noble and beautiful familiar she plans to summon. After all, she sounded so confident yesterday when we were reviewing for the summoning."

Around Louise there was nothing but derisive laughing from the other students that had all successfully summoned, though most of them had only managed common familiars such as owls, cats, and toads.

* * *

Most impressively, Tabitha had managed to summon a large blue dragon, and even Kirche had managed a clearly magical salamander.

Against her will, Louise couldn't help but despair at the fact that even if she did manage to summon a wolf to be her familiar, there was no chance that she would be able to compete with something as impressive as a dragon.

Making her way to the front of the crowd, she couldn't help but send off one last silent prayer to the Founder that she succeed. Even if she never managed to successfully cast any other spell in her life, it would be enough if she managed to summon and bind a familiar today.

With her wand grasped in her right hand, she began the modified incantation before the ritual circle, while she drew forth her catalyst in her left and began to flood the scrap of wolf fur with as much magic power as she dared. Finishing the modified chant, she concluded the spell by tossing her catalyst as accurately as she could into the center of the now glowing ritual circle inscribed on the dirt.

With a flash and sudden billowing of smoke, far in excess of what the others had managed to produce, Louise couldn't help but sink to her knees as she was suddenly overwhelmed with weakness. The moment the spell activated it seemed as if every scrap of her willpower was sucked out of her, and she felt almost hollow from the sudden loss of magic from within her.

Before she could faint however, the sudden draw on her magic stopped as quickly as it started.

As the cloud of smoke was blown away by a quick spell from Professor Colbert, she couldn't help but lose her composure and have her eyes water, as sitting stunned in the middle of the array was what appeared to be a giant puppy. Covered in brown fur, with hints of gray along its chin and ears it was adorable, but slightly alarmingly, was nearly three feet tall at the shoulder.

Getting to her feet and reaffirming her grip on her wand, she began the traditional binding for a familiar, calling out "Pentagon of the Five Elemental Powers, grant your blessings upon this creature and bind it as my familiar." As she finished the chant, she finished by kissing the fluffy baby wolf on its nose before it could react at the sudden change in its environment brought about by its explosive summoning.

Almost immediately, a circle of runes started to write themselves onto her familiar's brow seeming to almost hover over the fur of its head. Once complete they began to faintly glow with a faint bluish light illuminating a circle of jagged letters that surrounded a single brighter glowing point of light.

As she watched the last rune inscribe itself onto **her** familiar, Louise couldn't help by fight down the urge to jump and dance through her exhaustion at finally completing the most important, and also first, successful spell of her life.

Turning to Kirche and the surrounding silent audience, she couldn't hide the glee on her face or in her voice, "I do believe that my noble wolf is more than beautiful enough to justify my claims of success."

* * *

"Well now, all the students have summoned their familiar's, so everyone, you are dismissed for today. Please remember that classes are cancelled tomorrow in order to give all of you the opportunity to get to know your familiars better. This is your first step in a relationship that will with luck last all of you the rest of your lives and be companions throughout your path as nobles."

Having finished his speech, Colbert promptly turned and levitated off towards the school courtyard, soon followed by the rest of the class now that there wouldn't be any chance to mock Louise for yet another failure.

* * *

Standing alone with her fluffy new familiar, Louise couldn't help but feel limp and hollow inside from relief that she wouldn't be expelled from the Academy, and worst of all, have to tell her mother that she was a failure as a noble.

Sitting in front of her, the oversized wolf pup just sat and panted through the whole spectacle, focusing on her instead of all the other nobles. Feeling herself begin to flush from her new familiar's gaze, she tried to divert her focus onto something more familiar, namely that of the long hike back to her dorm on shaky legs.

"Come along now, we can get started on a name and getting to know one another tomorrow."

Followed by her familar, despite her tiredness a smile soon crept onto her face as her familiar obediently followed her, albeit with more than a few detours to investigate new bushes along the way.

End Chapter 1

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Holy Beejeesus, nearly 2,000 words typed up and actually posted for once instead of languishing on my laptop. Next chapter should be out super soon.

Please Review and Favorite if you like it.

Please if you leave comments take the time to use proper grammar and spelling. You get a slice of Portal Cake if you leave suggestions for how I can improve.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2 of Dire Familiar

Disclaimer: I own neither Familiar of Zero nor D&D, though I wish I had both.

Reviews: I am flabbergasted that 24 people left reviews, with 30 follows at the time of writing this. I barely even look at stories that are less than 5,000 words long, so my hat is off to all of you.

**Thank you for your comments and encouragement, it really boosts my resolve to continue my foray into actually writing instead of just reading fanfiction.**

**For those unfamiliar with Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, which by many is considered the gold standard for D&D, an adult Dire Wolf is a mottled brown, black, or white. Its dimensions are around 9' long not including the tail, and 5 ½' tall in the shoulder. Additionally, a healthy adult weighs over 900 lb(think a small car). **

**Historically, dire wolves were only about a foot longer than grey wolves, but this is dungeons and dragons, not real life that I am pulling from.**

**Physical stats: Strength=25 Dexterity=15 Constitution=17**

** Intelligence= 2-6 Wisdom=12 Charisma=10**

**Armor Class=14**

**For non D&D players, a score of 10 is what a normal Joe Blow human possesses, while 18 would be considered a Gold medalist in the Olympics. At 3 intelligence, you cannot even learn to read and are barely sentient. After becoming a familiar however, all creatures get their intelligence boosted to 6, making them capable of reading and learning human languages, but often lack the vocal apparatus for speaking. However, after spending time together and strengthening their bond, a familiar can communicate at first just to their Master, and later in the common language to others even if they normally would be biologically incapable of this feat. Armor Class describes how strong hit they can take before actually getting hurt. For reference, if you put a trained Joe Blow commoner in full body scale mail armor, that is how tough it is to actually cut a Dire Wolf. Comparatively, a trained knight in full plate and with a shield, would have and Armor Class of around 20 or 21.**

**Diverging from D&D: All of the above is for a druid's familiar, note that not only is Louise's familiar still barely a puppy, which has dropped his physical stats in half, but he is (according to Zero no Tsukiama wiki) the Heart of God, aka Lifbrasir, a living vessel that Louise is filling with her void magic through the runes. In the canon story, said familiar was then transported to an enemy army and exploded like a magic nuke. But Louise doesn't know that, and it is never mentioned what happens to the familiar if, say, he is non human and gets pumped with void magic while still growing up and not immediately turned into a bomb. **

**Diverging from Zero no Tsukaima: Magic as is applied in the anime just doesn't operate on a logical system, with the explanation for it being nonsensical, such as simply pointing with a wand or staff and then saying a line of mangled poetry. Additionally, overly straining your magic has no consequences, which strikes me as rather absurd considering the forces being summoned and controlled.**

Anything else would be a spoiler!

Chapter START

Back in her room at least, Louise felt herself about ready to collapse from the combination of exhaustion and relief as the exultation that had buoyed her on the trip back to her room finally began to fade. Sitting at her desk chair while her new familiar began to snuffle around her room, she couldn't help the tears that began to prickle at her closed eyes.

Her gamble worked. Even if she failed all of her practical magic classes, she was a noble! While she would never admit it aloud, especially to any of the other students, Louise knew damn well that she was essentially a failure as a mage.

But a familiar, and a mighty wolf of a clearly giant breed at that!

While she may be a failure as a mage, she still was a noble and not a failure.

Even if she was engaged to the Viscount of Wardes, the official contract had specified her in the contract as the noble Louise de la Valliere, third daughter of the Duke of Valliere.

If she had failed to even summon a familiar, even the engagement would have likely been lost to her.

Sitting in her chair full of exhaustion, she couldn't help but be swamped by the relief, that at least she wouldn't have to face the embarrassment of having her engagement canceled. While the Viscount Wardes had been kind to her when she was younger, she had no illusions that the engagement was based on such emotions as love. Maybe fondness and love might happen in time, but the engagement itself was purely practical, both for him, as well as for her family.

As the most noble family in all of Tristain short of the royal family that consisted of only two members, her family was a political power in and of itself, even if it had supported the Royal Family for generations.

In addition, with Cattleya's poor health and Eleonore's cancellation of her first engagement, any children that Louise would bear would have a good chance of inheriting her family's lands and assuming their title. Viscount Wardes comparatively, was of a very minor noble family that had managed to distinguish himself to the point of becoming the captain of the Griffon Knights, which were a well regarded royal order, if not quite on the level of the Dragon Knights or Manticore Knights.

Even if Louise was incompetent as a mage, she could still bring in a highly skilled noble to their family, while the Viscount would manage to marry far above his normal social station, as well as possess the chance of one day being recognized as the Duke of Valliere.

Breaking from her contemplation at the whining of her familiar as it nudged at her hand, she couldn't help but notice that nearly an hour had passed based on the position of the sun moving toward the horizon with her in a fugue state of exhausted contemplation. Patting her familiar on the head, she couldn't help but smile as he whined at her.

"Alright then, enough moping for now, let's get some dinner for ourselves and get a good look at what exactly you are my fine wolf."

Standing with no small effort, another wave of exhaustion swept over her, but not enough for her to stop, she tottered over to the bell pull that was present in every student's room, and used it to summon a servant. Carefully making her way back to her chair she couldn't hold in sigh as she sat down feeling as if her legs were made of overcooked noodles. Petting her familiar's head, she just hoped that the servant would arrive soon, as she felt about ready to fall asleep while sitting upright.

* * *

Watching the fur-less pack sister sit on the funny wood thing, he wondered what would happen now, and where the rest of the pack was.

The day had started so normally too. Mother and the rest of the pack had stayed near the den-cave, as food had been killed the previous day and there was still much on what had been brought back. Most of the morning had been fun with hunting fluttery things in the short grass and bushes. When a rabbit had been seen near the edge of the meadow next to the cave, he had given chase like a true hunter. After all, if he could catch a rabbit, then Mother might be willing to let one of the weaker hunter's begin to teach him how to hunt

After following the scent of the rabbit a short ways, he had found the rabbit burrow and settled in to wait. After waiting a short time, he had jumped when movement happened at the burrow, instead of a rabbit though, it had been a strange floating disk like one Father had told him two-leggers would use when they were ready to kill things in the woods, or even when different packs of them would hunt each other. It was all very silly, but for those without claws or death, they had to use something to scare away others that would try to steal their territory and hunting grounds. He knew that it wasn't though, since Father had talked about how they smelled like wood, blood, or the other hard stuff that two-leggers liked to carry around. Instead, in the instant before he hit it he had smelled spicy and nutty power from it.

Afterwards, the female two-legger had used the same funny smelling stuff that the disk had been, and then the new place had all made sense.

The pink haired female was his new elder pack-sister and she had taken him to be part of her pack so that one day he could be the hunter for her pack! Until then though she would take care of him and he would help her by watching out for danger like the lesser hunters from his old pack. As all these new thoughts and concepts ran through his head, his pink-haired pack mate was making funny noises at all the other strange two-leggers that were standing around holding all sorts of interesting food, though the presence of a really big bird-lizard was more than worrying enough to keep him from trying to impress his new pack mate with his hunting skills like he would for Mother.

After leaving the strange meadow to go into the giant fake cave that smelled like many many many two-leggers, they had stayed in a smaller cave that smelled like pack-sister. Pack-sister was tired though and just sat there, which was boring.

After giving his new den a thorough inspection though, without pack-sister doing anything, he decided to check whether she was okay by smelling her hand and lap that was just at his height. She got up and pulled a rope on the side of the room, then went back to sitting which was silly, but at least he knew she was okay, which was good.

Even better though, was she was rubbing his head, which felt wonderful. After petting him for a while, a new two-legger came to the den. Then his sister and the new person made funny noises at each other and the black haired female went away, before shortly coming back with FOOD!

The black haired one must another member of elder sister's pack since she made sure to bring food for both sister as well as some strange chunk of meat for himself. When she came back and collected the dishes while sister went to sleep after eating, he made sure to go and introduce himself like Mother always taught him to do to strangers.

After first approaching and then waiting for the new lesser pack member to stop he then checked her smell, a mix of food and water, to make sure that she was okay to be part of the pack. If she had smelled of sickness or filth he would have known to watch out for her to drive her away so that the pack wouldn't get sick, but since she smelled nice and was clearly a provider for the pack, she would be protected by him and elder sister. Even better, she was willing to pet him like elder pack-sister did, which in between the food and the petting, just confirmed that she was clearly another member of the pack.

Upon leaving, he went over to the big fluffy area that sister was and curled next to her like pack, ready to sleep for tomorrow.

Maybe elder sister would give him hunting lessons like Mother would!

* * *

With the arrival of a maid, Louise was quick to order dinner not only for herself, but also a cut of raw meat for her familiar. After she left, she forced herself to get up and retrieve a book detailing most of the common animals, both mundane and magical, of Tristain and its surroundings that Cattleya, her big sister, had given her when she had first gone to the Academy. Flipping through it to the well worn section on wolves that she had regularly checked when deciding on her catalyst, she was unable to find anything remotely similar to her familiar. While the book contained information about several types of mundane wolves as well as 2 known magical species, neither were remotely similar to her oversized familiar.

Setting the book aside and instead withdrawing a piece of parchment as well as a pot in ink and quill, Louise quickly prepared her letter for her elder sister starting with a basic retelling of the day, as well as her standard greetings and well wishes to the rest of the family.

Putting down her quill, she couldn't help but smile as she turned to watch her familiar as he sat and watched her from the hay bale that she had acquired earlier in her desperate hope of successfully summoning a familiar.

Now that she had a good look, Louise couldn't say that there was anything other than his size that really stood out as unusual compared to the wolves that were native to Tristain. And what a size he was, even lying down watching each other, Louise wouldn't be surprised if her new familiar outweighed herself by a fair margin. Add in the gangliness of his limbs compared to his body, it was fairly clear that she had summoned a rather young wolf, one that had only just recently started eat solids and begin to explore away from its parents. And while summoning a juvenile familiar may have been a sign of a lesser mage, Louise couldn't say that she would have looked forward to trying to bind a familiar the size her familiar's parents if her wolf was going to grow as big as she thought it would.

Aside from his size though, his coat was primarily a dark grey with white fur around his paws, shoulders, and mouth. But most spectacularly, and a point of particular pride, was the familiar runes that lay upon her wolf's brow. Consisting of a circle formed of what appeared to be ancient runes, along with a solid dot at the center, the runes could clearly be seen to be faintly glowing a bluish green in the dim candle light.

Taking notes of its major characteristics as well as its unusual size for her sister, the only other thing of note that she could find was its large chest and head. Compared to the diagrams of the wolves in her book, it clearly possessed an enlarged set of jaws and was much deeper in the chest compared to the wolves that were common in Tristain.

Shortly after finishing up her letter, the same dark haired maid as before arrived with dinner for both herself and her familiar.

After finishing and feeling rather full and tired from her summoning, she was quick to soon go to bed, almost immediately passing out as soon as her head hit the pillows.

Chapter 2 Finished!

**On Louise being exhausted; she used a spell that actively would draw the magic out of her, not something that she was the sole caster for. Considering she managed to pull a familiar from much further away dimensionally than she normally would have, she had more magic drained from her than she would have if she had been the sole caster of the spell.**

**As always, please review.**

**Suggestions will considered and used when possible, and criticisms will be considered and addressed.**

**But most importantly, please take the time to use proper grammar and spelling. I try to write using complete sentences and correct grammar, and so can you.**


	3. Chapter 3

Dire Familiar chapter 3

Disclaimer: I don't own anything other than the computer I write on, especially not D&D or Familiar of Zero, so don't sue me. If I did own either of them you better believe there would be some changes.

Author's ramble: I just finished re-watching the first couple of episodes, and am reminded again how much I loathe how stupid both Saito and Louise start out as. What is worse is the unspoken prejudice and arrogance of all the nobles about how the world works. This tells (minor in sociology) me several things about how Tristain society functions, most of them bad, considering this is a stable society that has existed for 6,000 years.

Super Kudoes go to Knolden for pointing out that Dire animals of any type in D&D are characterized by bony spikes exiting their skin at various points such as near joints. I was planning to put that in the story when they are found by Siesta as a plot hook to help teach Louise that commoners are intelligent, as they are rather reduced and hidden by his fur due to his young age and when Louise initially checked him she was exhausted and in low light. (which would give at least a -4 on her crappy spot check as a sorcerer)

Several people have wondered at the concept of using a puppy as a magical nuke such as Brimir originally used the Heart of God for. Rest assured, no puppies will be nuked in this fanfic.

To everyone else who read and reviewed thank you for your encouragement and continued input.

To the 693 visitors that didn't review as of me starting to write this, you make me very sad, hopefully all of you are just shy and will someday develop the courage to tell me what you think of my story, even if it will be only a few words.

**Diverging from Zero no Tsukaima: As several people have pointed out, I am making magic a more dangerous proposition than is shown in the anime. After all, as magic is shown in the anime, nothing more is involved than repeating bad poetry and willing something to happen. I refuse to believe that is how magic should work, and there would not be any need for an entire national academy that is solely dedicated towards only teaching the basics of magic to its noble students for at least 2 years that will turn out a respectably large number of dot and line mages (if anyone can tell me if the magical academy lasts more than 2 years I would appreciate it, haven't found anything on any wiki).**

**Geography: Yes, I am bringing that up, as while a great deal is covered in regards to the Eastern desert where the elves are from, and there are regular mentions of Rhub Al'Kali which exists beyond that, but there is no discussion of either the northern regions, nor to the south, which seem to peak out as being unclaimed by civilization in the only map of Familiar of Zero that I can find on any wiki. Thus, most of the mages should immediately assume that a Dire Wolf could have come from some distant location. Additionally, nations don't just declare war for no reason, yet at least two nations over the course of the series do exactly that. While the series was originally designed as a romantic harem comedy in a fantasy setting, there isn't a romantic lead summoned, leaving a mainly female cast to deal with the realities of the world and not romance.**

**Not following Canon: As I have never read any of the books, much of what I use will be based on the four seasons of the anime as well as using what I can find on the various wikis in order to fill in the gaps. As such, most of the blanks will be invented by me in accordance with how I think politics and economic issues are handled by a 6,000 year old civilization with a culture stuck in pre-Enlightenment conditions due to the presence of magic and the Brimiric Faith.**

**Louise's Maturity: While many nobles at the academy are raised to be useless twits, (Guiche) Louise was theoretically raised by her mother under the Rule of Steel, which demands that a noble shoulder the consequences of their actions as well as strive to fulfill all of the obligations that they take on as being nobility. Considering that she was perfectly willing attempt to kill Saito with square level magic for kissing her daughter in the anime, only failing due to him having Derflinger, Louise has every expectation that she will be held to a high standard of nobility and get punished if she fails. Growing up in this kind of environment is something that should make any 16 year old grow up fast. Desperate to be recognized as a noble and making decisions based on emotions as seen in the anime yes, but she also should recognize there are consequences to her actions, though she may only think of them afterwords.**

Enough of me rambling though

CHAPTER 3 START

The sun had finally come up and Elder Sister was still sleeping. At home with Mother and Father, the pack would be awakening by now. The sun was up and it was time to begin setting out to track food for the hunters as well as a chance to begin teaching the young how to hunt and play. He couldn't really blame Elder Sister though as the nest of soft things that they had slept on was very warm and soft, more so than anything else that he had ever experienced.

But it was daytime now and time so he would wake up Elder sister just like mother used to wake him when he was younger.

* * *

One minute Louise was comfortably asleep after an exhausting day, and then she was quickly returned to consciousness by a large rough tongue running over the side of her face.

"Aaaagghh, wha? What?" she mumbled through sleep encrusted eyes as the sensation stopped and though her eyes stayed close, she could feel a warm body close to her, as well as a sudden rotten odor of something terrible breathing on her. Shortly after that as she rolled to get away from whatever monster was in her room, her movements came to abrupt halt as she fell off the side of her bed.

Sitting up from her impromptu landing spot along with several of her askew blankets, Louise couldn't help but sit for a moment in shock at her abrupt awakening. The shock though quickly changed to outrage on seeing that no monster was present, just her familiar standing on her bed instead of obediently staying on the pile of hay that she had prepared for him the day before.

"You, you, you DOG! How dare you…" she couldn't help but let her voice peter out as she thought to herself of what exactly she had expected when she tried to summon a wolf as her familiar.

Taking a glance at the brightening window, which told her that she had been awakened at least an hour before she would have woken up on her own, she couldn't help the sudden yawn that ripped through her.

Which was strange, since while it was earlier than she was used to, there was no reason that she should feel this exhausted, where it wasn't just her eyes that struggled to stay open, but instead a struggle to sit up and disentangle herself from the several sheets and comforters that she had pulled up the night before, that ordinarily would have been kicked off sometime during the night as she got too warm.

From her position lying on the bed from where she had been knocked down, Louise couldn't help but shiver as a wash of cold realization ran over her. While she had never experienced this before, it had been covered repeatedly throughout their first year. Now that the adrenaline and later shock from yesterday had completely faded, she could feel the physical weakness associated with critically drained willpower clearly. On top of that, even under all of her sheets and the quilt of her bed, her hands and feet were freezing, despite it not being particularly cold in her room. This meant that not only was her willpower drained to the point where casting would be nearly impossible, but she had tapped deeper than that, which was the reason that instead of just mental tiredness, she was also experiencing physical symptoms. Most importantly, instead of just being unable to cast spells until her willpower recovered, she would need to both stay warm as well as eat heavily in order to recover physically from the summoning.

Sitting there she couldn't help as her hands started to shake from the realization of how close she had come to being killed like so many others from modifying the summoning and attempting to get a familiar beyond their ability. Just a little more power thrown into the ritual and it would likely have killed her.

As she sat there and panicked, her familiar had gotten bored of watching her and came over to the side of the bed and proceeded to try to lick her hair in order to get her attention similar to how he had woken her earlier. When that received nothing more than a shaky shove, her familiar promptly upped the ante and jumped down to the floor at her feet and then pushed her over and stood over her. Unlike before when she was asleep however, he then promptly lay down on top of her, practically squishing her.

While the earlier distractions weren't enough to break her out of her shock, it was infinitely harder to ignore a wolf lying on top of her that weighed almost twice as much as she did.

After several seconds of pushing and squirming, Louise managed to get herself out from under her familiar and untangled from her sheets to start getting dressed for the day. For today however, that meant donning the winter uniform of heavy wool with tights underneath her skirt as well as gloves in order to stay warm while she recovered from the drain of the near lethal summoning that she had performed.

In between her slow rising and moving slowly as she got dressed, she managed to leave for breakfast at around her normal time, meaning that she would likely be one of the earlier students at breakfast. This practice had become habit over the course of her first year due to the difficulty of finding a free spot to sit when she was recognized as being something that all nobles secretly feared and despised, being incapable of controlling her magic.

Unfortunately, as she exited her room and headed out with her familiar, she encountered Kirche and her fire lizard also heading down to the Alviss dining hall.

* * *

Of course Kirche new that she would be meeting with Louise on the way to breakfast. To that end she had planned out when she would leave her room just down the hall in order to encounter Louse just as she was leaving. Despite teasing Louise relentlessly for her failure to successfully use her magic, Kirche had no desire to see Louise expelled. After all, from the sheer power and variety of explosions that she regularly generated, there was absolutely no way that she lacked magic like the occasional magical blunt that would crop up from time to time in the more inbred sections of the nobility.

Personally, she thought that she had some sort of mental block that was causing the problem.

Of course, it was even better the way that she would puff up and spit right back at her whenever she so much as verbally poked her during class. As Kirche the Ardent Flame, there was no way that she would let such a flame lie still and quiet when it was so easy to provoke Louise into such a roaring inferno of anger and passion.

At her side Flame grumbled to himself about the cold of the morning hallway.

"Oh hush you, breakfast will come soon enough if you just wait." She responded to the feelings that that reverberated down her link with her familiar. This of course reminded her of what she was doing out here in the hallway for, namely getting a chance to get a good look at the familiar that Louise had managed to summon yesterday.

Despite Louise's boasts of summoning a noble and amazing familiar, she had managed to pull off a close second with her wolf, clearly both exotic to Tristain as well as magical based on its sheer size.

And while ordinarily she would be more than willing to challenge Louise on not managing to pull off her boasts, there was something to be said for knowing when to acknowledge a rival and not push until all the facts were known. Especially the rather important question of whether Louise could control her familiar appropriately, as she had no desire to try to fight off an angry wolf of that size, regardless of how old it appeared to be.

As the door to Louise's room opened and its occupant entered the hallway however, she could barely keep herself from gaping like a commoner.

Louise, someone how always maintained her image as a noble, and despite the makeup to hide it, was clearly pale and drawn. What was more obvious however was her clothing. Instead of the standard summer uniform that Louise almost religiously wore, she was dressed in the winter uniform, as well as having on a thin pair of gloves.

Between those two facts, Kirche could tell that whatever had happened, it was big. And not big like if Louise finally broke out of her prudishness with boys, but much worse.

At Louise's tired and challenging look though, she was reminded of her plan to poke Louise for details about her new familiar, and more importantly what level of control she had over it.

"So this is your noble and beautiful familiar Louise? At least it's bigger than certain other assets of the Valliere." she asked with subtle arm under chest in order to 'emphasize' exactly what kind of asset she was talking about.

"That's none of your business, you shameless Zerbst!" was her only response before she moved down the hall with her familiar following behind her with nothing more than a low growl at Flame.

Standing there as Louise kept going, she couldn't help but worry even more. Louise had a tame familiar, which was excellent considering that she managed to summon a highly predatory species, normally a good thing in a normal mage. But considering her normal success rate with magic it was more than slightly disturbing. More than that however was how tired she was acting. Combined with the heavier winter clothing, the only question in Kirche's mind was how the hell Louise could be suffering from willpower exhaustion. This was a girl that regularly managed to detonate entire classes without even looking the slightest bit winded.

Which prompted the question of what in the world she had managed to summon?

Sure, a wolf was a respectable enough familiar, but that sort of magical exhaustion from someone of Louise's lineage and likely magical power should have been more than enough to summon even a rare giant breed of wolf without the sort of willpower exhaustion that Louise was showing. If she had managed to get a dragon like Tabitha or some other rare and powerful familiar it would be understandable, but there was no way that wolf could be that powerful.

Right?

* * *

While Louise had set out for the Alviss Dining Hall in search of a large breakfast to help deal with her current exhaustion, her familiar had been dropped off outside the dining hall with the other familiars to await servants to feed them. This of course was followed up with an order for her familiar to not eat or attack either the other familiars or any of the servants that would be bringing them food.

In order to deal with the sudden influx of new familiars at the academy, the kitchen had responded by setting out a wide variety of possible food for the familiars in a fashion similar to a buffet with a group of servants there in order to note down any special dietary needs for some of the more exotic familiars as well as replenish the tables of food as they ran low.

Siesta, who normally would be serving in the dining hall directly had been reassigned to serving the familiars, and more specifically the carnivorous familiars as she had successfully dealt with Louise's familiar the night before and Marteu, the head chef, hoped that she would manage to continue to deal with feeding at least some of the other predatory familiars with similar success. In past years they had managed to avoid serious injuries, but for new familiars there was always the risk of an accident. Of course if they were injured the responsible familiar's master had to pay a fine and for a healer, but there was still the potential for a lethal accident with an unattended familiar, especially one that had recently been summoned.

Luckily for Siesta, the two largest carnivores among the familiars were Louise's familiar and Tabitha's Sylphid, a young wind dragon that had proven to be extremely docile in the short time that Tabitha had summoned her. Not taking chances though, Siesta had made sure that all of their food was laid out ahead of time and that she was safely out of the way prior to any of the student's arrival so as to avoid any chance of an accident, even from one of the smaller familiars.

After Louise had left her familiar in order to get breakfast for herself, Siesta moved carefully over to the young wolf in order to continue to become acquainted as the wolf had been friendly the previous night and would hopefully provide Siesta with an additional layer of safety from any of the other smaller carnivores that were present at the table and ripping away at the meat that had been placed in various sized bowls.

While being around a giant wolf normally wouldn't be the smartest thing for the maid to do, in this case several factors made Siesta far more confident than normal. First, she had already encountered the familiar the previous night and he had acted more like a friendly dog than as a vicious predator that he would likely become in the wild. Second, being near a non-hungry wolf that was friendly would likely be far safer than standing alone near a group of predators in the middle of eating. And third, while not quite as tall as herself, he was still a puppy, and reminded Siesta quite strongly of several of the dogs that she had grown up with on her parents' farm in the village of Tarbes.

Thankfully for Louise, Siesta's decision to move closer to her familiar came just in time to watch as he began to move toward a table filled with fruit where many of the herbivorous familiar's were feeding.

Trailing behind the wolf, Siesta noticed rather quickly what had caught the attention of her protection and proceeded to do her best to prevent any potential conflict that might occur.

"Mr. Wolf! No, bad dog! No hunting familiars!" she called trailing after the young familiar that had begun to crouch and move forward as if to stalk a nearby frog that was on the ground, having not been interested in the offering of fruit on the nearby table.

Despite several calls to in order to stop him as he began to stalk the frog slowly hopping away from him in the grass, the familiar failed to stop. Finally, Siesta managed to get next to the young wolf and try to push him back towards Sylphid and the other predatory familiars.

Getting around in front and to the side of the slow moving familiar, Siesta could only pray to Brimir that this would work as she put her hands on the wolf's shoulder and try to push him back and to the side in order to stop the familiar. Hopefully Mr. Wolf would stop and not attack her, but based on last night's interaction, Siesta could only hope that he continued to act like one of her family's dogs and not try to attack her for interfering.

After several seconds of pushing on his shoulder in an attempt to turn the large familiar, pain suddenly bloomed in her right hand, along with an abrupt halt to the familiar's advance.

Pulling back her now crimson hand, Siesta could do nothing but stare at her gashed hand that was now throbbing with intense pain whenever she tried to so much as move her fingers.

* * *

After getting Elder Sister up, everything had been boring with her put on the fake extra fur from before. After leaving their room though, meeting the fire two-legger and the fire lizard had been very interesting. After the two-legger and Elder Sister had talked at each other with funny sounds, Elder Sister had been quick to go to HUGE cave with all sorts of people and spicy smells coming from it. Before entering though, she had taken him over to a table where food had been laid out and told him that he was supposed to eat and not bother any of the other two-leggers that were around.

Of course, he hadn't understood the word noises that she had made, but the meaning was clear from the tone and how her body posture presented itself, but that was okay since he wasn't really interested in the other two-leggers any way since the food providing two-legger was already out in the fake meadow with more than enough food for himself and the other hunters. Of course if any of them tried to take what he was eating he was confident that he could show them that he and Elder Sister were the Alphas in this giant pack. Of course the big flying lizard that was already present was worrisome, but he was confident that he was stronger than everything else. And the big lizard smelled like a youngling too, so there was no way that it could be a better hunter than him, which to his mind was a big part of who was the Alpha.

After eating his fill from the various dishes laid out by the food providing two-legger, the question of what to do arose.

Of course any parent could tell you that it was a recipe for disaster when a young child of any particular species is bored and without supervision.

They create their own distraction.

For the wolf, this consisted of preparing himself to show the lizard that had eaten more than himself that even if it was bigger and could eat more, that he was still the better hunter of the two, and thus more important by far.

Of course, prey that were over at the other table had potential, but since they had another two-legger to feed them, he knew that that might not be a good idea, as they clearly had some sort of place in the pack, even if it was as someone else's prey.

But the lone frog hopping around in the grass off to the side was perfect. After all, one of the first things that Father had taught about hunting was to always make sure to separate your specific prey from the rest of the herd so that it would be easiest to follow it so that when you chased them until it collapsed there wasn't any other prey to defend it or confuse you.

Slowly making his way closer to the delightfully slowly moving frog, he made sure that he was downwind and stepped lightly so that he wouldn't be found by his new distraction. As he began to approach and get ready to make his move though, the familiar food provider had followed him and was making noises at him, resulting in his prey beginning to hop away.

At the chance of escape he began to get ready to make his charge, but the two-legger was pushing his shoulder, making him come up short.

Whining at the food-provider, he couldn't help but wonder what was wrong, all of a sudden there was the smell of blood and the two-legger was sitting down staring at her bleeding hands.

Something had hurt a member of the pack! There was only one response for something like that!

Howling has loud as he could for Elder Sister.

His job was making sure that whatever had hurt her was gone and didn't come back while Elder Sister summoned the rest of her pack to help the food provider. Keeping watch was barely necessary though, as Elder Sister was quick to come running with other two-leggers from the food cave. Lowering himself from his crouch, he laid down to the side to watch, confident that Elder Sister would fix whatever the problem was.

* * *

Louise's day prior to the hearing her familiar start howling had been getting better by the moment. While realizing that she had managed to magically exhaust herself and nearly die from magical exhaustion after her unexpected awakening had been less than pleasant, having an obedient familiar while facing the Zerbst had been a definite positive. Combined with finally getting to the dining hall with its promise of a hearty breakfast and the rest of the day free in order to bond with and name her familiar, things were looking up for her.

Then the howling started.

Thankfully she had managed to get through most of her breakfast at that point so it was no particular loss to rush to where her familiar was kicking up a massive fuss, but it still was not how she had imagined her first morning with a proper familiar.

Seeing a maid with bloody hands and a massive red streak down her apron was even more outside of what she had expected, but definitely explained why her familiar was making such a fuss.

Trying to remember Mother's lectures on first aid, Louse began to tug at her cloak with her hands as thoughts of using the material as a makeshift bandage flickered through her hands. As she handed over her cloak to the made for her to use to help slow the blood from the crying maid, she couldn't help but notice with a hint of relief that the maid's wounds appeared as deep gashes on her palms and not an injury such as a bite, absolving her familiar of wrongdoing.

Once her hands were fully wrapped in the cloak, the maid managed to show proper respect and thanked her for the help, standing up and looking ready to try for the kitchen, where she could likely get one of the other servants to properly have her hands bandaged.

Watching her familiar snuffling around her hands though from where he had come up to inspect the maid, Louise couldn't contain her curiosity as to how she had managed to injure herself so grievously when there were no knives or signs of an accident nearby.

Listening to her answer that she had managed to cut herself on her familiar's shoulder while trying to

stop her noble wolf from killing Montmeroncey's familiar was enough to make her stomach feel like it was about ready to drop down to the level of her feat.

A familiar's actions were considered an extension of the will of the master.

That single rule just about thundered through her mind, along with the rather unfortunate implications. While claiming that she had not ordered her familiar to hunt the stupid frog, by that same line of logic, it could be argued that she lacked sufficient control over her familiar and herself in order to forbid him from acting on her own subconscious desires.

Either she intended to kill Montmeroncey's familiar as an act of petty revenge, or she was sufficiently incompetent as a mage that her familiar was a threat to those around it.

Neither were particularly appealing, as both would likely result in a visit from Mother on top of any punishments that would handed down in order to limit the political blowback of such an event.

Which meant that she owed the black haired maid.

Handing over half her allowance to the maid was a possibility, considering what a commoner could make, it would be more than enough to cover any debt, but that would be far too embarrassing. After all, she would have to explain what she owed the maid for, which was unacceptable for a noble to admit that she hadn't even realized what her familiar was going to do.

No, simply paying the maid privately would be a disgrace as a noble, just one that would be see by a single commoner instead of her classmates.

Patting her familiar on the head and telling him to stay, she made sure that her wolf was away from any temptation as she moved over to Montmeroncy where she was cradling her frog to her chest after finding out that her familiar had nearly been eaten.

After getting within a few steps of the blond, she noticed Louise,

"What do want now, Zero." She was quick to ask. "Going to finish what your familiar started?"

Louise was quick to answer in a quite tone meant to not carry to the rest of the crowd that had gathered around the bleeding maid, "No, just going to point that you, as a water mage, owe that maid for saving your familiar and that if you want to save face as a noble, healing her would be a good way to avoid any trouble with the servants later."

While Montmeroncey certainly didn't look happy, she got the hint about making sure that the maid was taken care of and got to work on using her water magic in order to heal the slowly bleeding gashes on the maid's hands.

With the drama over, most of the small crowd of nobles that had been loitering around under the excuse of gathering their familiars were quick to disperse. Of course standing around and gawking wasn't appropriate for a noble, so no matter how curious they may be about it, most of them wouldn't be caught dead obviously eavesdropping over something as inconsequential as a maid getting injured by a familiar. That wouldn't stop them from gossiping about it incessantly at the various tables that had been set out by the lake for the students to get to know their familiars, but for the moment the appearance of disinterest would be maintained, if only because anyone who appeared too interested would become involved as a topic of gossip themselves.

Reminding herself to seek out the maid later in order to get the full story from her later, Louise was quick to collect her familiar and head off to one of the table in order to get started in getting to know her familiar in the daylight now that she was awake and had the free time available to her.

After sitting herself down at an empty table at the edge of the grounds, she was quick to inspect her familiar more closely. From the blood that coated his fur around his shoulders, Louise was quick to check him for any wounds by wetting her handkerchief and running it over her familiar's fur. While getting his fur relatively clean was a simple proposition, finding the bony spurs that were on both his front shoulders and hips was a larger shock. Knowing for sure though that she was responsible for the maid's earlier injury, Louise was just glad that she had managed to avoid publicly being ousted as the cause.

Heavens forbid what her mother would have done if it was known that she had injured a servant, even if indirectly, through her carelessness.

But more than that, it was more than due time that she named her precious familiar.

Sitting back with her tea and watching the various familiars and students around her, she considered her dilemma.

Merely naming her familiar something mundane like Flame as Zerbst had been bragging during breakfast would be unsuitable for a familiar of a Valliere. Similarly, it wouldn't do to be too pretentious with her familiar's name.

From what she had been able to figure out from her books last night, her familiar was both magical and not native to any of the Brimiric Nations. Similarly he couldn't have come from the Holy Land occupied by the elves. After all, the holy lands had become a desert as a result of the Founder's magic during his attempt to save the holy land from its Elven occupiers, and thus not the sort of place a giant wolf could come from.

That left to the Far East of Rhub'al Khali and beyond, where mythic animals and strange nations of both humans and nonhumans existed.

Straining as much as she could, Louise did her best to recall if there were any legendary heroes that she had heard of from the traders that would occasionally succeed in crossing the Elven lands with their goods. After sitting and thinking awhile and petting her familiar absentmindedly, Louise couldn't remember any particular tale from the tea merchant from Rhub'al Khali that she had spent some time listening to tell stories last year in the capitol.

The only name or word that she could remember was Onai, which sounded unusual enough to be fitting her familiar without being immediately identifiable as pretentious.

Either way, if anyone asked about her wolf's new name, she could always make up some story about how he was a legendary hunter or something.

Introducing her familiar to his new name was simple, as her familiar was of course quite intelligent. As well as being quite interested in responding to his name and her pointing in front of her when he got a treat from the selection of cakes that were laid out with her tea at her table.

While not a commoner animal tamer, Onai was easy for her to direct, being more than willing to go where she pointed as long as there was a treat from one of the trays that had been set out along with the tea that had been set at the table.

After finishing introducing her familiar to the concept of responding to his name, Louise was rather pleased with his loyalty as Onai proceeded to lay down on the grass next to her table and proceed to watch the various students and familiars clustered around several of the nearby tables.

"Come one Guiche, which one are you going out with?" came from a group of boys sitting at one of the closer tables to Louise's.

While she didn't know any of the boys in particular, Louise was easily able to identify Guiche Gramont by his ridiculous frilled white shirt and rose that he had taken to using as a wand. Known more for his flirtatious way than for any particular magical ability, he was of known to Louise by the simple expedient that he was the only boy to have hit on her all last year even after her lack of magical talent had become known in the academy. Overall, Louise considered him to be a womanizing fop that acted desperate to date as many girls as possible, but it didn't change the fact that he had never gone out of his way to be nasty to her, unlike many of the other nobles in the Academy.

He hadn't ever stood up for her either, but Louise had never expected him to do so, and if he had, she would have spent quite a bit of time wondering what his motives were.

Regardless of Louise's feelings though, it looked like his womanizing tendencies had finally managed to catch up with him as a pretty first year had approached him with a basket that likely contained some kind of homemade food while Montmeroncey, a second year that even Louise had noticed he was wooing was in a direct line of site, and if the way she was squeezing her frog familiar was anything to go by, more than ready to make the connection that she wasn't the only girl that Guiche had given his romantic attentions to.

With both of them together, and clearly expecting that the son of Gramont would show his favor toward them alone, it didn't surprise Louise that both of them were quick on the uptake of what exactly had happened. While neither looked particularly pleased with the other, both seemed to be in agreement of how they felt about Guiche, with a hand print on each side of his face, Guiche was left standing as everyone else laughed and the first year fled back to the Academy in tears and Montmeroncey huffed and returned to her table with several of her friends.

Watching the confrontation, Louise couldn't keep herself from smiling at not just the impromptu floor show, but also at how the drama would likely keep the situation with the injured maid from earlier being the primary source of gossip material for the next several weeks.

Unfortunately for Louise, it seemed that Guiche had caught her smile, and had immediately marched up to her table in order to confront her and salvage his reputation.

As he stood in front of the table where she had sat alone, Louise couldn't help but internally cringe at what she knew was going to happen.

A challenge to a duel.

Duels were technically illegal, but out on the lawn with no one but various servants present, a duel could be done and over with far before any teacher could appear to prevent it. Several such duels had occurred in the last year, and while both parties had been publically punished, it didn't change the fact that Louise had before yesterday never successfully cast a spell, while Guiche was the son of a famous general.

In other words, she was about to be publicly beaten down by a dot mage for the sole reason that it would help distract the school gossip from Guiche being dumped into how he had gotten dumped and then destroyed anyone who made fun of that fact.

Both she knew and Guiche knew that she wouldn't win a magical duel between the two of them. But what Guiche hadn't particularly taken into account though was the nature of Louise's single successful spell from the previous day.

As Onai sat up and began to growl in the back of his throat at the approaching aggressive male, Louise's mind began to desperately search for a possible out from her upcoming humiliation.

All that she could recall however, was the numerous tomes that she had spent nearly all of the previous months studying, namely the familiar summoning. Drifting out of that mass of information, the common phrase from the introduction to one of the texts came to mind, 'the actions of the familiar are held by Brimir and the Law as being one and the same as that of their mage master.'

If Louise recalled correctly, Guiche had summoned a giant mole as his familiar, which was rather feeble compared to her own wolf. Additionally, as the challenged she could decide the terms of what form of combat would decide the duel.

Normally, that would be magic as they were both mages, but if she could push for it to be a duel of familiars, well that would possibly save herself from a public shaming as Guiche could use basic spells and golems in order to pin her down and force her to surrender. While there was the faint chance that Guiche's mole would manage an upset win, especially if it revealed some sort of magic ability that Guiche had yet to brag about, a duel of familiars still was far better than if they did so with their wands, as well as having the bonus of likely ending with a far reduced punishment when the teachers did eventually arrive to investigate the inevitable commotion of a duel between nobles.

* * *

Wagging his tail, Onai was just about ready to start vibrating with excitement.

Finally, a chance to show that he was the new Alpha among all of the familiars.

Sure, showing how powerful he was by trying to hunt that frog or growling at the other familiars had worked as most of the humans and familiars had been properly respectful afterwards, but there was nothing like showing the other pack members their place by pinning one of them to the ground and putting his teeth to their neck.

Why Elder Sister was saying that it was okay to fight the giant earth rodent wasn't something that he was overly concerned about, only that he could finally show some of the other familiars how powerful he was. While he might be younger and smaller than a few of the other familiars like the magic smelling dragon, he could definetly beat all the non-flying familiars and cement his position at the top of the pack!

Watching the earth rodent snuffling on the ground from where it had emerged from the dirt, Onai was crouched and ready to spring with a moment's notice. More than that though was that unbeknownst to him, but obvious to the rest of the nobles watching the fight, was that the crest on Louise's familiar's head had begun to glow as soon as it had looked like a true fight would start.

At the signal from the dragon's master that smelled of ice and determination, Onai was quick to charge and then leap for the still form of Verdandi, Guiche's mole familiar.

Unfortunately, Onai hadn't known that at the moment he was being empowered with void magic from Louise through the familiar crest on his forehead. On top of the passive amount of magic that had been flowing through his system, Onai's jump managed to carry him a solid 5 ft beyond the tail of Verdandi, and while he landed without trouble, it gave more than enough time for Verdandi to recover from his shock at seeing a massive wolf leaping for him with a set of teeth and claws that were way too big for its comfort.

With greater care this time, Onai approached Verdandi, watching to see if he would use the rather fearsome claws that he would normally use for digging. Verdandi, instead of attacking though, began to start to try to burrow underground, after which he could attack from below and swiftly win the fight.

However, Onai was close enough and quick enough to land a heavy strike with his claws to Verdandi's exposed side, quickly followed up with a strong bite onto Verdandi's left foreleg before the giant mole could disappear underground. Not letting go with his jaws, Onai jerked his head around while keeping up the pressure in his jaws, managing to wrench the giant mole out of the partially dug hole that it was disappearing into and launching the familiar onto its side next to the partially dug burrow in the academy grass.

As Verdandi struggled to rise, bleeding from the gashes in its side and leg, a earthen wall formed between the two familiars, halting the advance of the Dire Wolf as it stalked forward in order to finish off the other familiar and prove that it was truly the Alpha of all the familiars at the Academy.

* * *

"Loss by interference, Guiche de Gramont" intoned Tabitha, standing several steps in front of the crowd of curious second year nobles that had formed at the beginning of the familiar duel.

Watching Guiche fuss over his 'dear Verdandi,' Louise did her best to keep from cackling at finally, finally, managing to not be the loser of a confrontation among her classmates. Petting her own familiar and rubbing behind its ears like she had seen Cattleya often do to the various hounds that she would play with.

What was worrying to her though was that it had ended so well for her. While it certainly wasn't unpleasant to bask in the recognition that her familiar had won her, it had worried her at how easily her familiar had won.

Fast, strong, and with an incredible initial leap, there was no way a wolf, even one of his size, should have been able to do any of the things that he had done. Sure, she had suspected that her familiar would win, but not without managing to take a single hit. Add in the sheer power behind that bite, and Louise had a rather bad feeling that if he had wanted to, that level of strength would have been more than sufficient to kill a commoner armsman wearing anything less than plate mail.

Last night, she had been stumped as to what kind of wolf her familiar was. After this though, she would definitely be asking Professor Colbert for his help, as he was both one of her favorite professors, as well as having been there when she had performed the summoning ritual.

As she made her way back toward her rooms to both clean off her wolf as well as see about getting her new familiar some toys, Louise couldn't help but hope that her familiar continued to stay loyal and obedient to her without any further accidents.

End Chapter 3

* * *

By god that took far longer than I ever thought it would. In between practically rewriting the entire chapter twice, as well as staring at a blank word document for far too long, this has to be not only the longest, but also the hardest chapter that I ever wrote.

So, please give my your comments about what you did and didn't like, and hopefully the next chapter will be much faster.

No promises though, as my classes for nursing school is currently eating up my life at a prodigious rate.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4 of Dire Familiar

Disclaimer: D&D and Familiar of Zero aren't mine, only a sandbox that I am kicking around in.

Comment section for questions people have/will ask.

**Economy:** I am going to be dealing with a lot of money issues in this chapter, so I thought I would address it before I got half a dozen messages and comments on certain discrepancies. Familiar of Zero currency is composed of the Ecu, and from scenes in the anime, is the only currency used in all the Brimiric Nations. With no variation in denominations, as well as varying wildly in value depending on what is being purchased in the anime, it is essentially worthless for an actual economy. To that end I will be using the D&D money system, with some minor tweaks, which has a wide variety of tables on relative values for services and objects I can check against.

For those unfamiliar with it, the basic unit is 100 copper to 10 silver to 1 gold piece. In terms of value, market price is 6 coppers for a live chicken and 10 golds for a cow. Similarly, a complete peasant outfit is 1 silver while a set of clothing for a noble is 75 gold for everything, including basic jewelry. Decent commoner food for a day is 1 silver at a tavern, with a mug of ale for an extra 3 coppers. In comparison, a good meal for a noble is 3 golds with a bottle of ok wine being 10 golds.

**Tweaks**= In D&D the values for land and property ownership are through the roof and heavily dependent on the Campaign setting and game master discretion. According to the charts, a small farm lot is around 1,000 gold pieces, with the farmland itself going for around 1,000 again depending on setting. Essentially, a farm should be impossible for anyone to own but a noble, which is not how the Familiar of Zero setting works, resulting in me resetting property values down so a family farm and lands should be around 200 to 300 gold depending on location, which is within range of purchase for a commoner couple that pools their savings for several years assuming they live at the poverty line while earning at the level of a skilled commoner.

Derflinger went for 100 Ecu, which in reference, a similar masterwork sword is worth 120 gold, and a basic +1 enchanted sword is around 1,000 gold depending on the enchantment on it. Of course normally an Epic class magic eating sword would be in the hundred thousands, but that's what happens when no one has and Identify spell handy.

But enough of that, let's get on with Puppy Fun Time!

**Chapter Start**

As the sun slowly made its way into Louise's room, peace reined over the sleeping body of Louise. Awake and getting ready to stalk his prey, Onai was less sanguine about letting his Master continue to sleep in, especially on the Day of the Void, meaning a whole day with his Elder Sister free from the classes that she insisted on dragging him to where he was forbidden from doing anything interesting.

From his bed of blankets in the corner, Onai carefully made his way to the elevated bed that was of only minimal effectiveness in preventing his planned course of action.

Curled in her sheets, Louise would normally have been fast asleep and helpless against any kind of assault on her person. After several days of waking to a gigantic beast with foul breath standing over her licking her face, Louise's sleeping habits were beginning to change more to those of a veteran soldier capable of wakening to battle readiness within a moment's notice at the slightest hint of danger.

Of course the danger was merely of waking up to her familiar saying good morning in his own particular way, but the same principles still applied.

Just as Onai began to crouch for his epic leap that would properly awaken his Elder Sister for a Glorious Day of Fun, his target twitched, prompting him to hold totally still so as to remain undetected.

As Louise awoke to an empty bed and a distinct lack of wolf breath and saliva, she couldn't help but give a mental sleepy cheer to her previous night's successful plan. Namely, by having that maid Siesta spend most of the afternoon playing games such as fetch the stick while she was studying in the library for her classes, and then after dinner distracting Onai with a piece of heavy rope with a piece of ribbon on the end, she had managed to tire out her familiar enough that she had awoken before her familiar was ready to ambush her out of boredom the next morning.

Getting out of bed to the sight of Onai waiting to the side of her mattress, Louise couldn't help but feel glad that she had managed to shanghai the maid into distracting Onai as well as improvise her most recent toy for Onai's use.

Looking at the rope that had been progressively destroyed last night though, Louise couldn't help but add another item to her list of things to do today. During the Day of the Void there was only one major responsibility for nobles; that of morning sermon at the school's chapel dedicated to the Brimiric Faith.

While as nobles there was no formal obligation to attend the sermon as long as one took a part of the day to dedicate to the Founder, missing repeated sermons had been known to damage a noble's dealings with the Church, as well as prompting speculation on what had become so important that a young noble couldn't attend. While most of the rumors from missing sermon centered on oversleeping due to the previous night's romantic entanglements, Louise had no intention of having her name bandied about for yet another reason beyond her own lack of spell casting ability, which was bad enough as it was.

As both she and her familiar were expected to attend, Louise had planned to attend the earliest sermon given, allowing her plenty of time in the rest of day for her main task, that of going into the nearby capitol, Tristania, which was the closest city to the Academy in order to acquire some of the supplies for her familiar that she felt were only appropriate as his Master.

One of those items that she had been planning to acquire for the past week was an appropriately sized collar. While she did have a collar available from the supplies that she had gathered when preparing for the summoning, the collar in question was appropriate for a normal sized wolf, not one that was nearly as tall as she was.

Of course there wasn't exactly a need for the collar to help her control her familiar, which had shown himself to be highly obedient most of the time, but instead so that commoners and other visiting nobles to the Academy wouldn't mistake her familiar for a wandering monster that would need to be hunted down and destroyed if Onai managed to be spotted when wandering the Academy late at night.

Now added to that list however were several oversized dog toys that would likely need to be custom made and strengthened with earth magic in order to be durable enough to survive being played with by her familiar. Thankfully that maid Siesta had mentioned that it would be possible to get the cook to set aside several of the larger bones from the animals being butchered by the kitchen for her familiar to chew on. Other than that and posting the letters that she had written for Cattleya and Mother, it should be a relatively quick and easy trip on one of the Academy's horses that were made available to students.

Of course taking Onai with her would have been Louise's preference, but somehow she doubted that she could manage to convince the horse not to panic when Onai would show up. On top of that, Louise wasn't sure whether Onai could manage to keep himself under control and behave appropriately in the crowds of a city. Instead, it was best just to have Onai stay at the Academy for the day while she ran her errands.

Getting dressed for the day, Louise couldn't help but smirk as she imagined Siesta's response to having Onai spend the rest of the day following her around as she did her work. While the first couple of days had resulted in the first introduction, and injury, of the maid, Louise couldn't say that it had been bad in the past week being able to trust a servant with keeping her familiar out of trouble.

After that first disastrous meeting, Louise had run into Siesta again, as she was the primary maid responsible for arranging for food appropriate for the various carnivorous familiars that had suddenly come to populate the Academy.

Siesta of course had done her best to be polite to the young noble and even managed to not flinch when Onai had come up and greeted her happily by giving her a quick bit of grooming as was appropriate for a younger member of his pack.

Squaring away the arrangements for Onai being fed was easy, as the Academy had already had a great deal of experience arranging such things in the past, and all that was needed was making sure that a sufficient number of cattle were regularly purchased from one of the farms surrounding the Academy and that the bill be added to the Valliere account with the school for when they paid for that months tuition.

Considering the degree to which Onai had been friendly to the maid, Louise had taken the time to track down Siesta somewhat regularly whenever she wanted time to herself and had Onai follow Siesta around.

Normally just letting one's familiar wander around the castle or stay in the noble's room was the preferred option, but after Louise had spent a few moments thinking about how 'active' Onai was, letting him run around the Academy without her to prevent him from wrecking havoc was pretty much a totally stupid idea. Similarly, leaving him locked in her room would insure there wouldn't be much left of said room by the time that the day's classes ended.

Either way, Onai was taken care of for the rest of the day and Louise had a full day of relaxing and shopping to take care of.

* * *

Today was a fun day for Onai. First, Elder Sister had gotten up on time and had fed him some of food that came from the pink oinking prey that had arrived at the food making place yesterday.

It had tasted great, and then Elder Sister had even given him some of it after it had been cooked like she ate it, which was even more amazing!

Then, she had told him to go play in the big meadow with the other familiars while she went in the building with the big windows and the singing noises. Afterwards then she had told him to stay with Little Sister in her black and white dress and to play with her.

It was important that food providers like Little Sister were taken care of since she didn't have any claws like him or explosions like Elder Sister had.

Anyway, a day of fun with a pack member, yummy food, and even maybe Little Sister would play games with him like throwing the stick so he could chase it!

* * *

For Siesta, the Day of the Void was definitely her least favorite day of the week. Sure there was less work as most of the servants got a half day off in order to attend church and perform any personal tasks, but at the same time it also meant that most of the men, especially the noblemen had free time to get into trouble.

More specifically female trouble.

As a an admittedly 'developed' member of the maid staff, having young noblemen have free time to take an interest in your body was something that Siesta would far prefer to avoid. While that sort of thing was a problem for a maid anywhere you worked, it was much more of a concern in a place like the Academy.

Of course they also paid far more than other possible places so it did balance out fairly well, and often times the professors and senior servants were more than willing to help the younger staff avoid any problems, if only to prevent a scandal from injuring the Academy's reputation.

What had been of great help recently though was the regular presence of the wolf familiar that seemed to have taken up following her whenever his master was in class. Siesta even had a sneaking suspicion that Louise, Onai's master, had specifically instructed the giant wolf to follow her around, if only to give the rather energetic animal something to do that would keep it out of trouble.

Of course the most recent trouble to sweep the Academy had thankfully occurred where she hadn't witnessed it, but she had still heard quite a bit in the kitchens from those that had been present in the dining hall during lunch earlier in the week.

One of those frisky young noblemen had been caught trying to woo two young noblewomen at the same time, and when confronted had managed to get slapped by both of the girls in question. Additionally, Kirche, who stood out as the only young noble in the school from Germania in addition to her other reputation, had afterward complemented the young Gramont on his fire, implying that if he truly wished to experience a passionate encounter that he should have instead have tried to have them at the same time.

Of course it had snowballed from there and the argument and words used had had the gossips among both the servants and the nobles in a tizzy for the rest of the week, quickly eclipsing any rumours about Siesta and having a notable familiar like Onai follow a particular servant like her around.

While spending part of the morning playing with a familiar wasn't exactly how she had expected the day to go, given that Louise should have been free for the day to watch over her familiar, Siesta couldn't feel too annoyed, especially when she finally managed to get the wolf to let her pet it long enough for it to eventually go to sleep out on the lawn of the Vestri courtyard.

* * *

By the afternoon however, Siesta was about ready to kick herself for ever thinking that letting Onai sleep somewhere while she did her work was a good idea.

The Count Mott, a royal messenger and noble to boot, had spotted her while she was cleaning in one of the hallways, and had been quick to both compliment her as well as ask for her name.

Attention, especially from an adult nobleman, was not in any way good for a maid. Considering what she had heard about how the Count liked to dally with women whenever he traveled to various cities, Siesta had a pretty good idea of how bad things could get.

Best case scenario, the Count was going to stay several days while whatever business he had was conducted, during which he would ask for her to serve as his maid while he was here. Of course she would have essentially no chance of refusing if he wanted additional 'service,' but at least it would be over quickly and pregnancy was something that could be avoided easily with the right herbs. She might be able to convince Chef Marteau to assign her to go into Tristainia for some difficult to find supplies in order to avoid him, but that wasn't in any way a sure bet.

Worst case, the Count would purchase her contract of employment from the Academy and take her back to his estate with him to act as a mistress. Several years of that and then being kicked out once her contract ended with no prospects as a maid for further employment at any respectable place and a distinct chance of getting pregnant before then.

After several moments of panicking as the Count walked away, Siesta placed her cleaning equipment back in her cart and headed off to find the Headmaster's secretary in order to take steps to prevent the worst from happening.

She had a plan, and time was of the essence.

* * *

Returning in the afternoon from a successful day of shopping, Louise couldn't help but feel more relaxed than she had for ages. Sure her magic studies were less than exemplary on the practical end of the scale, but she had a powerful and obedient familiar and had just gotten several toys for him for his obedience as well as restocking on several of the reagents that Onai hadn't managed to find on their walks in the forest.

After stabling her horse and directing the servants to take her various bags back to her room, she set out to collect her familiar and show him some of the toys that she had managed to acquire as well as his new collar that even had his name etched onto it.

After searching the main courtyards, including the kitchen courtyard where Onai would often spend time begging for scraps, Louise returned to her room with her good mood slightly lessened from being unable to immediately locate her familiar.

Technically she could try to look through her familiar's eyes, but that always was both difficult and headache inducing, and thus would only be tried as a last resort.

Opening her door to her room and finding Onai on her bed was about what she had expected though. Finding that maid Siesta also there and having clearly spent some time crying while petting her familiar was distinctly out of the ordinary.

Entering the room and closing the door as the maid stood and curtseyed, Louise couldn't help but feel most of her good cheer begin to fade at the prospect of yet another crisis, though one that was unlikely to be her fault if the lack of whispered conversations around her as she had been outside was any indication.

Learning that her convenient distraction for her familiar was being sent off to be some lecherous noble's mistress pretty much killed her good mood on the spot. Hearing the maid's request to become her personal maid however did help her ego, but doing something gauche like directly countermanding a request from a Count to the academy wasn't exactly something that she had any desire to do; regardless of how inconvenient it would be for her personally to find another way to distract Onai during class time.

From Onai however, she could feel that he was distressed about the whole thing. He may not know what was happening, but it was pretty clear to him that something bad had upset his Little Sister and the food provider, which meant that it was his job and Elder Sister's to fix it.

"Milady, if you would be willing, it would be possible to hire me before the Count does." Siesta was quick to try to argue her point while Lady Valliere looked like she was undecided.

"I already talked with Lord Osmond's secretary, and she told me that she would be willing to delay any paperwork from the Count long enough for you to have my contract transfer be dated well before the Count's, and any confusion could then be dismissed as a mistake on the part of the Academy."

After hearing that, Louise was definitely looking more favorably on taking the maid on permanently. Between the feelings from Onai to protect her as well as the maids ability to plan ahead and prepare an excuse that absolves responsibility for any scandal from the Valliere name, Louise was at that point pretty much decided on helping out the maid. Any maid that could both help distract Onai during the day as well as clearly having enough of a brain to plan out how to avoid becoming some noble's sex toy was a servant that she could make use of.

Of course there was only one question left?

"And how much do you expect me to pay you out of my personal allowance in addition to protecting you?"

Sure she was pretty much convinced that taking the maid was going to be what she did, but she hadn't ever hired anyone before, and while she still had a goodly amount of her allowance saved up, if this maid asked for more than she had, well, she wasn't going to be trying to convince mother to send her extra money and try to justify hiring a maid.

Hearing her quote a price of 40 gold a year plus room and board, which was around another 20 gold while at the Academy, Louise did a quick mental tally. Call it 60 gold pieces total a year, that was around 5 gold a month for her own maid that would look after of Onai as well as provide personal help with anything else she needed.

Considering her monthly allowance was nearly ten times that, it was totally small change, even after she had spent half that month's allowance on the toys for Onai as well as getting the reagents and wolf pelt used in the original summoning ritual. Add in that it would secure her maid's loyalty from keeping her from becoming some rich idiot's mistress, and Louise couldn't see any clear reason to turn the maid away, and quite a few incentives to hiring her not only for ability to care for Onai but also to improve her own level of comfort and free time.

* * *

Several days later and Louise couldn't help but enjoy her newly acquired maid as she sat at her desk in the afternoon and worked on a paper on the principles of non-Earth based transmutation. With a fresh pot of tea and biscuits brought up by Siesta and with her having taken Onai down to one of the gardens to play with him, Louise could work in peace and comfort and at the same time be assured that tomorrow morning her familiar would have been too tired out to give his personal brand of wake up call.

Putting down her teacup at the sound of knocking, Louise couldn't help the small frown at the interruption to what had otherwise been a perfect end to the day of classes.

Seeing Professor Colbert standing in the doorway with a distinctly worried expression, Louise felt her frown deepening at the sight of the normally reclusive teacher appearing before her. His next words however made it seem as if her stomach had turned into a solid lead weight.

"Ms. Valliere, I would like you to come with me to the Headmaster's office in regards to an issue with your familiar."

As she stepped out into the hallway to follow him, Colbert's next question was enough to stop her in her tracks.

"Did you intend for your familiar to maul two guardsmen in the employ of the Count Mott earlier today?"

* * *

For Siesta, the past several days had been spectacular, barring the encounter with the Count Mott.

Being a personal maid to one of the young Noblewomen of the Academy was turning out to be everything that she had dreamed of when she had first gone to work as a maid at the school. While being a glorified playmate and babysitter for a giant wolf wasn't exactly what she had imagined, it was far better than the majority of her previous job had been. Sure there was getting to know Mistress Louise and all of her preferences as well as having to take care of her more personally than she had as a general maid, but that was still a good bit easier than cleaning the Academy or working in the kitchens had been. Waking Louise in the morning and helping with her hair was so reminiscent of home and all her younger siblings that it hardly felt like work to her. And then the rest of her job was in many ways was even easier.

Currently, her main task was to do Louise's laundry all the while making sure that Onai was sufficiently distracted so as to not cause trouble as well as to play with him so he was sufficiently tired so as to go to sleep at the same time as Louise later that night. To that end she had managed to acquire a live rabbit from the head chef for Onai's dinner and then set the familiar to hunting it in the enclosed garden area of Vestri Courtyard. Watching Onai bumble around the various bushes and trees in search of his dinner was more than sufficient entertainment to keep her distracted from the drudgery of washing clothes.

Thus distracted, Siesta didn't notice the pair of guards that entered the courtyard from the servant entrance and had made their way over to where she was working.

"Siesta of Tarbes?" Hearing a voice from behind her, Siesta just about jumped out of her skin, having been too distracted by her work as well as her thoughts to notice the two armed men that had approached.

As befitting commoner guards, they only wore chest armor and carried spears, but it was still far more in the way of military gear than Siesta was familiar with at the Academy. Even the classes for magical combat rarely involved more than the sword wands that were popular among the more militant members of the nobility.

What shocked her into immobility though was that the one nearest one immediately attempted to grab her with one hand.

"You will come with us as demanded by the Count of Mott where you will be punished for failing to present yourself at his estate after you were instructed too."

At this point Siesta was beginning to break out of the shock of being accosted in the Academy, a place that she had grown to expect as being if not safe, then a place without violence of any kind against commoners. Half standing and half dragged upright from where she had been scrubbing laundry, she was about ready to protest the treatment. Even if the Count thought that he had a right to her service by purchasing her contract, having his guards forcefully kidnap her from the heart of the Academy was really too much. With having convinced Louise to purchase her contract before the Count could arrange it; legally they shouldn't even have been able to get past the guards at the entrance to the Academy that normally acted to screen visitors.

Even as they began to move her back towards the entrance by which they had entered the courtyard, things began to rather spectacularly go downhill for the two guards.

While ownership was practically nine tenths of the law when it came to posturing between nobles over commoners, that only really applied when the noble in question could successfully remove said commoner from another noble's possession without getting caught. With the papers that they had with the Count's seal on them as a royal messenger, leaving the Academy, as long as they didn't encounter a professor interested in stopping them would be straightforward, as would traveling with the girl back to the Count's holdings.

Unfortunately, niceties of paperwork and seals were pretty much as useless as their weapons were when it came to giant, Void magic buffed Dire Wolves, even young ones like Onai.

Break

Chasing the rabbit had been beyond anything that Onai had ever done before.

No burrows for it to hide in, no other pack mates to try to either steal his prey or to help him hunt, just him and the quickly moving rabbit that Little Sister had managed to capture and then release from its cage for him to hunt.

No more practicing chasing the stick or pouncing on the dancing rope thing, just him and the still living food.

The best part was that they were both in the fake meadow that was surrounded by rock walls so that the rabbit couldn't escape after he missed the first several times he lunged for the quickly moving animal. Eventually he was victorious though, managing to get around the bush the rabbit had ducked into soon enough that when it came around the other side he was there and waiting for his dinner to try to stop long enough for him to land a paw on it, which promptly broke its spine, leaving him with a fresh meal that he had managed to catch and kill all on its own.

After finishing his meal and getting ready to return to Little Sister so that she could pet him and even give him something to drink from where she was washing the strange fake skin that Elder Sister wore, he realized that there was the scent of someone else in the meadow.

Watching from behind the trees, he saw the other two-leggers grab his Little Sister and try to drag her away. Along with the fear scent on the air from Little Sister towards the armed people, there was only one response to such interlopers.

* * *

Breaking from the bushes, Onai charged the guard that wasn't holding onto Siesta with a lunge that carried him not only to the guard, but quickly through where he had been standing.

When confronted by a monster wolf nearly as tall as they were, a well trained veteran commoner might have been able to respond in time to avoid injury. The two guardsmen were not of that variety, having served the Count for several years each as well as regularly being trained with weapons in order to support the Count against any potentially dangerous commoners that might accompany another noble with a grudge against the Count for his womanizing. While well trained and capable, neither were prepared or able to respond to nearly 500 pounds of wolf that had just knocked one of them to the ground and then proceed to hit the downed man with a paw nearly the size of his head.

Watching his partner go down under a giant wolf, the guard holding Siesta immediately let go, moving several steps to the side so that he could fully grasp his spear and get ready in case the beast attacked him as well. When the wolf instead seemed focused on his fellow guard trapped screaming underneath it, the still standing guard immediately followed the opening given to him with a charged stab from his spear in accordance with the training that had been drilled into him.

Having the spear practically bounce off the wolf's flank, barely leaving more than a slowly bleeding scratch at the same time as his fellow guards screams cut off was not particularly reassuring to the guard.

Confronted with a quickly turning almost 5 foot tall wolf that looked ready to take him next, the guardsmen decided to take the path of safety and immediately make a break for the kitchen entrance in the hope that the old axiom about hungry lions held true for wolves as well.

Namely, 'you don't have to outrun the lion chasing you; you just need to outrun everyone else."

By the same extent, if he could manage to get through the door into the kitchen, odds were that the monster would either eat his companion or the other servants would be enough of a distraction if he was followed that he could get away.

Letting the nobles handle a monster like that sounded like a much better idea than trying to fight something that was barely scratched after getting a solid hit with his spear.

* * *

Snarling at the man that he was busy standing on, Onai was ready to bite down on the bad man, but he had a feeling that Elder Sister wouldn't want him too. She had after all spent no small amount of time telling him not to hunt or eat any of the other two-leggers or fellow familiars that were everywhere in the giant stone cave where he had been spending most of his time.

When the other man had tried to hurt him with the point stick, it had stung, but since the bad man then tried to run away and left Little Sister alone, it was okay.

Little Sister was looking better now that the bad men weren't being mean, so that meant that he did a good job and Elder Sister would be happy!

* * *

When Louise got to the Headmaster's office, she was about ready to, well she wasn't sure, but she was going to be doing something, she just hadn't decided on what yet.

Siesta's job was to keep Onai out of trouble, so normally she would go for punishing her new maid, but if the Count Mott had sent guards to assault her maid, then Onai needed to be rewarded for protecting a servant under her personal protection.

The bright spot, at least in her mind was that neither of the guards were dead. She remembered quite well the first couple of times she had tried to play with Onai by throwing stick for him to fetch. He'd run after the branch thicker than her arm, and then when he got it squeezed so hard it had broken on both sides of his jaws.

Since then she had used a branch strengthened by line class earth magic since the same thing had happened when a dot level spell had been used to try to strengthen a new branch.

Louise was pretty sure that regardless of whatever armor those two guards had been wearing, if Onai had seriously tried to kill them, they would be in pieces by now.

Entering the Headmaster's office and seeing one of the Count Mott's guards as well as Siesta, Old Osmond, and his secretary Ms. Loungeville, Louise could only hope that this ended in her favor. Normally the legal system considered any action taken by a familiar as the exact same as if that action had been taken by their noble master. If Osmond, in his role as Headmaster, judged Onai's attack as being unprovoked, then she would be considered accountable and fined, though that wasn't exactly what had Louise worried.

Her mother's response when she heard did.

Of course, since it was Count Mott and his men had been involved with harassing her maid Siesta, his, and by extension his men's, would normally be considered at fault. According to the paperwork that had been filed with Ms. Longueville, Siesta was her maid, and as she had both the paperwork filed with the Academy as well as having paid for the contract to be transferred, there was no reason to have Mott's men at the Academy on unofficial business. Which meant that Mott's hands were sufficiently dirty that it would look dirty and embarrassing if ever brought before a court justice, something that would likely be avoided.

* * *

Old Osmond was, while not happy, certainly not overly displeased with the recent incident that had occurred within his domain.

Having enjoyed a look or two at Ms. Louise's maid, as well as some reconnaissance from his mouse familiar Motsognir, he could certainly see why a man like Mott would be interested in having her. While not quite on the level of his secretary, she was undeniably a temptation for a younger man, and likely would have been a source of trouble for some of the young male students as well if not for her finding a place with young Louise.

Under normal circumstances he would have been quite happy to slap down an arrogant little shit like Mott in the courts if it weren't for politics. Namely, the Viscount Mott was a special messenger for the crown, meaning that it was difficult to pin a misdeed solely on his shoulders without implicating the royal family by extension for choosing an unworthy agent. Add Louise's position as a daughter of the Valliere family as well as the juggling of verbal demands from Mott for the maid's services and the paperwork filed by Louise with Ms. Longueville, and it looked like everyone, including his Academy, would get smeared if it wasn't resolved quietly.

Of course the thing that really helped him was that the Count wasn't present. Sending his guards back with a copy of the legal documents showing that the maid Siesta was contracted to the Valliere girl was a simple and clear way of showing the Count that the Academy would quietly side with the Valliere family as well as demonstrating to him that the legalities were observed and most importantly, documented.

Without any permanent harm to either guard that wouldn't heal within a month without a water mage, the Count, if he was smart, would move on to other opportunities, and thus the problem would quietly go away for all the parties involved.

What was the best part was that his Academy managed to keep yet another pretty lady around to help keep him feeling young.

Sure, theoretically he should be punishing Ms. Longueville for failing to fill out the Count's request faster, but he knew that sometimes it was best to let women get their way. Of course that it helped out a young lady from a less than pleasant fate certainly wasn't going to be a problem in his book.

* * *

With the Headmaster's ruling that it was clearly all just a big misunderstanding, and that the maid's deception had borne out as she had planned, Louise was more than happy to get on with her afternoon.

Nothing was pinned on her as being her fault, and if the way that Professor Colbert was looking at her, it was likely that she would get further support from at least one of her teachers for her actions.

Now all she had to do was figure out how to reward Onai for managing to not kill the guards.

**Chapter End**

**Holy crap, 13 pages, 6,000 words, and done on schedule.**

For all those people still reading, I am looking for a beta reader beyond just my own re-reading. If you are interested, please PM me, I would be delighted to have someone give me a second opinion before a chapter gets published.


	5. Chapter 5

Ch.5 of Dire Familiar

AN: I don't own anything but what I have invented, and even then you can never be sure.

**Sorry for the delay, currently working my butt off studying for my Nursing Program as well as working part time. Add that this and the next chapter have been giving me trouble and you get a slow writer.**

**OCness: I am starting to move many of the characters away from how they are shown in the anime, as most of them are portrayed as archetypes and are rather flat in terms of personality.(and not just Louise's chest) I will do my best to have them develop in a logical pattern but as I have stated before, first fic, so no promises.**

**Super thanks to my betas Zaralann, weather witch nami-zo and Skelo who helped with input, ideas, and generally forcing me to stay somewhat on task for this chapter and hopefully in the future as well.**

Chapter Start

Having finished class for the day, Louise was ready to start her main task for the day of the non-academic variety, namely preparing both herself and Onai for the Familiar Exhibition.

Of course that was still nearly two weeks away, but Louise was willing to admit that if she wanted to avoid embarrassing herself she would likely need a bit more in the way for prep time than most of the other competitors. Add in the fact that she still didn't know what element she possessed based on her familiar, and Louise was aiming for just showing off how awesome her familiar was without trying to use too much in the way of magic. At the same time, she planned to be involved with her familiar's performance as she had seen many of the competitors do during last year's competition.

Most of those that didn't perform with their familiars tended to get laughed at.

This of course was why she was currently out in one of the gardens watching Onai try to chase butterflies and figure out what she could do with him that would be sufficiently impressive. Considering that while Onai was certainly obedient, thus far, things like complex instructions hadn't been very well followed.

Prime example being that she had told him to go find Siesta to do her laundry, as there had been a particular lode that day due to an accident when she was working in potion lab, and nearly two hours later he had returned with a seriously dead and slowly bleeding rabbit that had been happily dropped at her feet with a proud giant wolf looking at her.

Trying to make him perform something complex wasn't exactly going to be happening if Louise wanted everything to occur smoothly.

Add in that the only magic she could regularly cast was invisible explosions and there wasn't all that much that she could contribute to show off for the Exhibition.

Watching him jump around however reminded her of why Onai had recently needed to start sleeping outside near the kitchens where a shed had been built for him. Namely, her wonderful familiar that had started out at nearly 3 feet tall in the shoulder was now nearly as tall as her in the shoulder, with his head rising a good margin above her own. And while he had finally started to look a little less likely an adorably oversized puppy, it was pretty clear that he had yet to reach anywhere near his adult size.

Eyeing his new size, Louise was reminded of something that she had always wanted to try with some of Cattleya's hounds that had never quite worked.

If what she planned worked out it would certainly be impressive enough to keep her from being ridiculed by her peers.

* * *

After the bad men had been made to go away by Elder Sister and everything had gone back to normal, Onai had made a new FRIEND! The big flying lizard that smelled of magic had finally acknowledged Onai as being the superior Alpha by bringing part of her kill to share!

Of course it was only part and after she had eaten part of it, but that still meant that the big lizard that called itself Irukuku wanted to be his friend and be allied packs.

The fact the Irukuku could talk had been almost as big a surprise as anything else that Onai had experienced in his life, right up there with finding himself in this new place with Elder Sister. Afterward, Onai had begun to realize that not only could Irukuku talk, but many of the sounds she was making were something that he could do too.

Unfortunately all the other familiars were still too scared to play with him.

Irukuku, instead of being scared, wanted to share his toys and play with him when Elder Sister and Irukuku's two-legger that called her Sylpheed were busy. Even if they couldn't play Chase the Stick, there was still the rope that they could play Tug of War with and Hide the Squeaky. Tug of War was the best though since whenever he had pulled on it both of the two-leggers in his pack would always lose, which wasn't any fun, even if they made up for it by being able to throw the stick for him to chase.

What was absolutely the best though was that Irukuku actually knew how to talk like a two-legger! While the language lessons hadn't gone very far since it was a bit difficult to get his mouth around a lot of the words, he already knew not only how they sounded, but also how to speak the really important words like 'food, dinner, stick, Louise, and Siesta,' though the last two he still had trouble with saying right. He couldn't wait to see how happy Elder Sister would be with him when he said her name and managed to ask her to play. Naturally he wasn't going to be showing a skill like that until he really had it down, but until then he had a friend that would play with him, and sometimes he was even willing to share some of his food since Sylpheed always complained that she was hungry all the time, just proving that Elder Sister was the best since she had gotten Siesta to be his Little Sister and have her always get food when he was hungry.

Unfortunately, he had grown so big that it was hard for him to go through the doors in the fake stone cave that Elder Sister spent so much of her time in. Last time before she had told him to stay outside, as he had gone into her room his head had nearly reached the top and his sides had scraped the sides, with his spikes managing to show how sharp they were by cutting into the sides of the doorway. They hadn't grown all the way out, but they still extended a good several inches above his fur. HE thought that they were awesome since they were going to get as big as his parent's were, and showed how he was special, but Elder Sister thought that since they always rubbed against doors and stuff, that he wasn't allowed into the narrow areas of the stone cave any more.

It was fine though, since Elder Sister had made one of the old two-leggers make him his own stone cave near where the food smells would always come from that was all for him and for his toys. There was even a bunch of old rugs that were on the floor so it was super soft just like the grass in the meadow for when he slept.

* * *

For Siesta, the past week had been more than wonderful. No more threat of Lord Mott, or any other nobleman looking for 'fun' looming over her head, and Ms. Louise had been spending almost every hour when not in classes working with her familiar doing some sort of training, leaving her with plenty of free time. But for all the free time, Siesta still had a few new duties as a result of the shift in schedule, including the one that she was currently doing. Namely carrying a pitcher of water and a few snacks for both Ms. Louise and her familiar out past the Academy gate to where they had been practicing that afternoon for the Familiar Exhibition that would happen later this month.

With how large Onai had gotten recently it shouldn't have surprised her, but watching Louise, who was barely over 5 feet tall try to stay balanced on her familiar that was already taller than her was something that made her want to laugh every time she saw them. Add in the fact that her familiar was significantly wider than a horse was, and you got a noble that had to grip her familiar's fur for dear life every time that Onai would take a step. While the spikes that swept back from his shoulders had become more apparent with his recent growth were still small enough to not be an immediate danger for Louise, who was seated as far back on Onai as possible, they remained something of a threat for any passenger on his back.

As she set out their repast, Siesta noticed that Louise had changed her normal routine, and instead of trying to ride Onai sidesaddle, had instead shifted to kneeling on Onai's back while gripping his fur in one hand in order to keep herself stable as Onai swayed as he walked around the open field that they had been practicing on.

Earlier that day she had set up several posts on hastily lashed tripods as per Ms. Louise's orders, and she was quite glad to note that most of them remained standing, a testament to her attempt at craftsmanship.

As another explosion rocked the field and a crater was blown out from next to one of the targets, along with a set of curses that almost turned the air blue, Siesta couldn't say that the number of targets left standing was a particularly glowing testament to Ms. Louise's accuracy with her magic. Though the sheer size and number of craters around the various targets spoke well of her endurance and willingness to try again and again. Considering that Onai was barely walking along the side of the field and the targets couldn't have been more than 50 yards, from her, Ms. Louise would likely be practicing quite a bit more before she got the hang of accurately blowing things up while mounted.

What had shown a great deal of potential for the exhibition that Mistress Louise was preparing for was the stack at the far end of the field of various construction materials that she had managed to acquire for a similarly destructive purpose. After having managed to get several other servants to move the various boards and rocks to the edge of the field that Louise had laid claim to, Mr. Colbert had stopped by around lunch, apparently at Louise's request, to enchant the materials with a variety of hardening spells.

Now, however, they were almost uniformly ripped in half or otherwise shredded, having been chewed on by Onai. Most impressive though was the slab of marble that had been strengthened with a line class Earth spell. The toughest material present as well as the most strongly reinforced magically, the edges had been broken off with large divots running down the slab from where Onai had tried to scratch it. Onai had more than demonstrated that nothing short of a highly skilled line class or better mage would be capable of making a construct that could even slow down, let alone stop, Louise's familiar if he ever desired to destroy his surroundings.

All the destruction just reminded her how glad she was that Onai had taken a liking to her, because there was no way that everything would have turned out so well for her if Onai had been half wild like some of the other predators that she had heard of being summoned in previous years.

Finally finished setting out the snacks for Ms. Louise, as well as the rather larger snack consisting of a large cut of mutton for Onai, she called out to the duo, "Ms. Louise, I brought your afternoon snack."

After announcing her presence, Louise was quick to break off from her most recent attempt at accurate destruction while riding her familiar, and instead refocused on trying to dismount from Onai before he realized that there was food to be had and launched himself at it, with her still on top of him.

After Louise having safely dismounted and made her way over to the table where Siesta had set out her a pitcher of water as well as a small selection of pastries, Siesta couldn't help but ask "Um, if it isn't too much, what are you trying to do by riding Mr. Wolf like that?"

Muttering into her plate of cookies, Louise blushingly responded, "Mother can cast battle spells while riding her Manticore in the air… And, and, even if my spells don't always work, well, at least I can still train myself to cast from my familiar as well."

Perking up a little, "and if I ever managed to get good at casting spells, being able to cast spells while I'm mounted will help me stand out as a mage of the Valliere family. Neither big sisters Cattleya or Eleanor have big and fearsome familiars like mine, so I can show that even if my casting isn't exactly the best, I can still use my magic like mother does while mounted."

Even as they continued to discuss how Louise could one day manage to use her familiar as a mount, Siesta was glad that with her new position as Ms. Louise's maid she could actually talk to a noble without being punished. Of course she would never be allowed to be anything other than respectful to the utmost, it was still a far cry from the social level she held as a general maid for the Academy, where the only words expected out of her had been agreement to any request that she was given.

"Ms. Louise, wouldn't it be better to use something else for casting spells though," Siesta said as a new thought came to her. "Why don't you use something longer so that you can aim better like one of those sword wands that are in some of the stories about knights?"

Watching Ms. Louise mull over the idea after having spent several moments sputtering into her cup of water about how she didn't know how to use a sword, Siesta was just standing next to the small table she had set out earlier hoping the Ms. Louise never asked where she had gotten the idea or exactly what stories she was talking about.

There was no way she could mention that the story in question that she was referring to was _A Country Maid in the Hall of the Duke._ While Ms. Louise hopefully wouldn't recognize the title of her favorite novel, there was no way that she wouldn't eventually find out the 'romantic' subject matter.

Thankfully, there was no further comment or conversation as Ms. Louise stood and headed off towards the academy, likely to search out from either a teacher or from the library on whether an alternate from her normal wand focus would help her in her attempt in directing her magical blasts.

Even when left with both the remainder of the dishes as well as a wolf familiar's giant head that could bite her in half sniffing around her in search of further food, Siesta could happily say that she was definitely rising in the world compared to what she had been.

Now if only she was making even more money and the world would truly be excellent.

Ah well, in a couple of years Louise would be graduated, and with it would likely be a raise from being a student's personal maid to a Lady's Maid, with the corresponding increase in status and pay to go with it.

* * *

Watching Louise return from the window in her room, Kirche couldn't help but wonder what was going through that girl's mind. Several weeks had passed from her initial realization that Louise had managed to nearly kill herself summoning her familiar, and she still was far from having a solid answer on what Louise had done in order to tax herself so severely.

Sure she recovered fairly quickly from the willpower exhaustion from the summoning, but the question of what she had summoned was still up in the air.

In between spending time bonding with Flame and her normal number of distractions, she had done a bit of asking around about Louise's new familiar. Hearing from Guiche that Louise's familiar had managed to bite through a pillar of magically strengthened Bronze over two feet thick that he had cast had certainly given her a clue however. Asking Tabitha had only gotten a negative response on whether she thought that Sylpheed could have accomplished the same task with ease.

Heading down to the library both to research more about Louise's familiar as well as do her own homework, Kirche couldn't help but wonder what element Louise could possibly be. A wolf was relatively neutral elementally speaking, but most of the texts that she had read about familiars pointed to dogs, and most canines, as being elementally most related to earth, though water and fire were apparently also common. Which based on Louise's past attempts to cast Earth spells was most definitely not her element, just as all the other elemental spells she had tried in class had failed. Add in the way that the explosions that she had just watched her cast had no relation to her own element of Fire and Kirche was feeling just as stumped as the Professors as to Louise's element.

Passing several other students in the hallway, Kirche couldn't help but smirk at the memory of the Librarian's complaint when she had been in the library earlier about how he had to practically reshelve then entire section on Familiars due to Louise checking out almost every book in the section prior to the Summoning ritual.

Entering the library and spotting Tabitha reading one of her seemingly endless supply of books at one of the tables set out for reading or note taking, she quickly moved to secure a seat at the table in order to both start work on her homework as well as taking a glance at the pile of books stacked in front of Tabitha. Noting that they were a mix of topics, ranging from several biographies of famous dragon knights to what looked like a treatise on aerial magical combat, Kirche could immediately see that while Tabitha wasn't doing her homework, she would be unlikely to be interested in renewing their earlier conversation on what it meant that Louise had exhausted herself during the Summoning. Similarly, any conversation on what powers or special powers her familiar likely had would also be unwelcome.

Ah well, no conversation just meant that she could spend the time focused on her essay about elemental recomposition before seeing if she could find anything in the bestiary section that would come close to describing what kind of wolf Louise had summoned.

Whether she ended up finding what she was looking for, Kirche couldn't say that she was too upset that it seemed that Louise had finally found a little bit of fire in herself.

After all, for herself who carried the Runic title The Ardent, having a Valliere her own age with a bit of spunk just added to the fun that she could have at school.

* * *

For Tabitha, the past week had been more than busy enough without the added difficulty of trying to deal with Kirche's curiosity.

For a Knight of the North Partierre, often being sent on dangerous missions was a fact of life, and in order to survive there was no real solution other than to regularly train and work hard in order to expand her magical capabilities whenever possible.

Ever since she had been forced to become a chevalier, her life had been a never-ending stream of dangerous missions that her Uncle Joseph, the King of Gallia, had made clear that she was not expected to survive. That she hadn't could be attributed to the sole fact that time and time again she had thrown herself into both her training and the missions with the sole goal of surviving and becoming stronger in order to survive. Living alone and fighting alone with no help and no one to rely on had forced her to not only become strong, but also to withdraw from most of her peers, as she found less and less that she could relate to among them. Being assigned to observe the nobles at the Academy of Tristain and meeting Kirche had changed that, if only slightly. While neither had much in common, Kirche was still someone that Tabitha could consider a friend, and one that it was unlikely that she would one day face in battle at that, considering the distance between their respective nations.

Summoning Sylpheed had changed that status quo once again, but in a radically different way. Having a dragon that could fly was an immense boost in her combat abilities. After having bound the creature, having her familiar actually start talking to her later that night about how she was hungry however was not at all what she had been expecting of her familiar.

The only dragons capable of speech were Rhyme Dragons, which were widely acknowledged as having been extinct for over a thousand years due to having been hunted down and rendered for potion ingredients. Adding in that Sylpheed, or rather Irukuku as she called herself, was both rather young and not overly bright, and Tabitha was confronted with not just a familiar that could aid her, but instead a person that she needed to become strong enough to protect.

Regardless of the consequences, Tabitha had kept the secret and was incredibly glad that she had. After several years of living a life with no one that she could talk to or rely on around, having Sylpheed as a familiar, a friend, that she could always trust and would never betray her had been something new and incredibly valuable. Tabitha hadn't had anyone that she could truly rely on since she had ceased to be Princess Charlotte and become simply Tabitha.

Recently though, Sylpheed had been gushing to her about how she had acquired a new friend that she could play with at night when the two of them weren't practicing their aerial abilities. From what she had said, it was definitely one of the other familiars at the Academy. While she hadn't seen this new friend of Sylpheed's yet, she had every intention of going out and shadowing her familiar in two night's time, which was when the two apparently had planned out some event that had sent Sylpheed into a flurry of kyuis to the point where Tabitha still didn't know exactly what they were planning to do.

Glancing at Kirche where she sat across the table in front of her in the library, she shortly contemplated offering to bring the girl along, but quickly decided that it would be difficult to fit her under her wind spell 'invisible cloak', a triangle class illusion spell capable of hiding the user from all five senses. While she considered Kirche to be a friend, it would be difficult to explain her proficiency with a spell that was relatively unknown outside of the military. Add in that if Kirche came with her it would stop her from asking questions of Sylpheed and it was a relatively easy decision to leave her out her evening plans.

Settling down to her reading, Tabitha set her thoughts on her plans for later to the side with the practiced ease of a combat veteran and returned once again to her book.

* * *

After nearly a month of dedicated practice, Louise was as ready as she could possibly be. More to the point, she had managed to get Ms. Chevreuse to help get her demonstration props ready.

These weren't the simple posts or hardened construction material that she had practiced her aim on, or that Onai had tested his strength against. This time she had a set of three reinforced marble statues that were dressed in basic unenhanced bronze armor. And hopefully by the time she was done tomorrow they would all be scorched by explosions and then ripped apart by Onai's fangs.

Considering that she had seen Guiche practicing his poses on a bed of flowers with his giant mole, even if she fell off Onai during the Exhibition she would likely still be ranked higher in the competition than at least one of the other competitors. Having found out that morning during classes that the Princess was arriving later that day and would be acting as one of the judges for the competition, Louise was feeling as if things were truly looking up for her. Not only had she been practicing for weeks longer than anybody else had been, with the Princess in attendance there would be no chance of some noble managing to convince the Royal Family later on that she wasn't a noble due to her, and she wasn't too proud to admit it to herself, failure to cast any spell that wouldn't end in an explosion.

Knocking at the door and quickly followed by the door opening with a cloaked figure slipping inside was quick to shake her out of her contemplation of the next day's festivities. Standing from her desk as the figure pulled back the hood to reveal Henrietta's face, Louise immediately dropped to one knee regardless of being dressed in only her nightgown.

"My Princess." Immediately breathed Louise

"Oh come now Louise, there is no need to be so formal. After all, did you not once push me into the dirt so that you could be the princess when we played when we were younger?"

"But that was a long time ago, and, and…" she quietly spoke, "and before it was obvious that I was terrible at magic, regardless of who my family was." With her eyes downcast, Louise didn't see how Henrietta's eyes widened at the admission that must have cost Louise immensely just to say.

Stepping forward and enfolding Louise into a big hug, Henrietta just held her childhood friend and hope that her support would be enough even as she felt Louis shudder in her grasp as well as feel warm wet spots appear on her chest where Louise's head was.

Stroking her hair, Henrietta searched for what she could say that would help her friend who clearly hadn't managed to prosper as well as she had hoped since they had last met.

After several moments of silence, Louise started to tug herself free while attempting to apologize for her improper behaviour.

"Oh shush, sometimes everyone needs a good cry. Now what have you done to fix the problem and what can I do to help. I know you summoned a familiar, I would have heard the gossip and you would be back at your home if you hadn't."

With that, the conversation continued to Louise hesitantly explaining her summoning of a familiar of unusual size as well as her practice in regulating the size and direction of the explosions that seemed to be the only magic that she could reliably cast.

"Well, it sounds like your familiar isn't going to point to a particular alignment." Mused Henrietta out loud. "And none of your studies have indicated any of the normal problems that other mages have historically had such as a lack of power or ability to direct it. It's just that all the spells you've tried won't work right?"

Seeing Louise's nod while she sat on the side of her bed and wiped her face with the kerchief that Henrietta had provided, Henrietta couldn't help but smile.

"So all you need to do is figure out how to make spells that will work for you. Maybe if you stick to the non-elemental spells and try to build your own spells that make sense for you they will work better." Continuing that line of thought, she pointed out her reasoning, "And I know that when I started modifying some of the spells that I was taught by my tutors they worked far better than what I had been taught. So really, all you need to do is figure out your own spells and everything should work out!"

Clapping her hands at the thought of such a simple conclusion to the problem, Henrietta couldn't help but feel pleased at how she had helped her friend.

Staring up at her from where she was seated, Louise's thoughts were slight more disbelieving at the task that the Princess was suggesting. While she may have gotten the best grades in class when it came to magical theory, it didn't change the fact that often a new spell could take weeks and even months to create, and most of the spells that were in common use had been improved from their original versions for centuries to become more effective and easier to cast.

Considering the alternative of just continuing to fail though, she supposed it was probably worth a try, especially since after the familiar competition she should have enough spare time to really start work on what she would need if she seriously started trying to make her own spells.

* * *

After spending the rest of the visit reminiscing about earlier times as well as renewing their promise of friendship, Henrietta headed out to the kitchen garden instead of her quarters. Louise had told her all about her new familiar when she had asked regarding the lack of familiar in the room and she wanted to take a peek for herself of her friend's familiar before she was called on to judge them in the next day's competition.

Making her way through the silent halls to the entrance to the kitchen courtyard where Louise had told her that her wolf familiar was staying due to his size, she summoned a ball of light as she stepped out into the darkness. After a few moments of searching she found the large shape that was the oversized shed that served as Onai's new home after he had gotten too large for inside Louise's room.

Staring at the giant lump of sleeping fur that even lying down was level with her chest, Henrietta was once again reminded of how truly powerful Louise's magical potential was as a descendant of the cadet branch of the Royal Family and the legendary Karin of the Heavy Wind.

Watching her familiar continue to sleep, Henrietta murmured, "Louise, even if you don't believe it, if you ever grow into your potential you will change the world."

Chapter End

So, I have part of the next chapter written, but am having serious trouble with the action scenes.

Remember, reviews are love!


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